Prose Critique #14
Use word order to create clear imagery
Welcome to Prose Critique, in which I critique an excerpt for grammar and style. Style is subjective, so my notes won’t resonate with everyone, but I hope that they’ll help writers learn how to focus their writing to convey meaning in the boldest, clearest, most interesting way possible.
In this excerpt, a woman learns that her novel has hit the New York Times bestseller list. My comments mostly focus on placing words in the clearest order to achieve clarity while maintaining voice.
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I’m sitting at the number-one spot on the New York Times Bestseller list, and no one knows it but me.
Well, me and my boss slash best friend at my actual job, Samantha, and maybe my former literary agent, Wendy, if she’s been checking the list, which she probably hasn’t done since she fell off the face of the Eearth on her own Eat Pray Love send off. According to her Out of Office automatic email reply and her voicemail greeting, she’s in Thailand frolicking with elephants, which is absolutely zero help to me.1
Back to Samantha—my overly excited, hopelessly lost in love, highly emotional boss, whom I also call a dear friend—who just texted me two pictures that dive-bombed my day.
The first—a screenshot of this morning’s Times best seller.
#1 - Endless Summer Nights, Krystal Wheaten - A young widow finds comfort in a resort manager2 while on vacation in Puerto Rico.
That’s me. Well, not my name, but my pen name. No one knows Krystal Wheaten. She doesn’t actually exist. Krystal—the name of the teddy bear I slept with every night growing up, and Wheaten—the kind of dog we had—was the pseudonym I created years ago when I published Endless Summer Nights—my first and only romance novel.3
If you could call it that.
It belongs in a section where chiseled chests and melon-sized bosoms splash4 the cover art. Although, I will say my cover is more tastefully done, with grains of sand and twisted thigh shots,5 but that’s a whole other conversation unrelated to content. It’s not a Christmas gift for a mother-in-law, or your typical book club read. If someone catches you reading it in the airport, it’s the kind of book6 where you bend back the cover.
Back to Samantha and the second picture, which answers the burning question of What in the hell is happening right now—a screenshot from two weeks ago of Willow Williams, Instagram influencer extraordinaire from two weeks ago,7 laying8 on a beach in Puerto Rico, a frosty strawberry daiquiri next to her melting in the blazing sun next to her,9 and my book, Endless Summer Nights spread on her face, covering everything but her smoldering eyes.10
She has over 300 million followers on Insta, and her Tiktok videos consistently hit ten million views. There are thousands of comments under her picture, and thousands of shares.
Well. That explains a thing or two.
I pull up the Times website on my computer to check myself11 and close my eyes tightly while it loads. Maybe if I just open one eye slowly enough, it’ll change.
It doesn’t.
There I am—Krystal is—with a big ol’ number one next to it.12
Most people would be happy.
I get that.
I am not most people.
Is there a tiny part of me that’s jumping up and down and wanting to squeeze myself into a bottle of champagne and swim around a little?13 Absolutely. But that part is monumentally smaller than the larger 99%14 of my existence that’s terrified at the thought of my parents finding out the level of detail in which I wrote about male genitalia.
The voice in this paragraph is a lot of fun and hints at tension.
“in a resort manager” I think the widow is finding comfort in the “arms of a resort manager” or in “a relationship with a resort manager” or some other noun. To say she finds comfort “in a resort manager” sounds a little unclear and risks the reader picturing the widow literally inside the manager.
This is a fun way to sneak in some character details without derailing the focus of the scene or deflating tension.
“chiseled chests and melon-sized bosoms splash” I like the imagery and the active verb but it’s a little confusing to say that “chests” and “bosoms” splash. Technically, it’s illustrations (of those things) that splash across the cover. But you could also choose a different verb to simplify this description.
“grains of sand and twisted thigh shots” Nice imagery again, but these two items are so different that it takes a moment to work through this sentence (“sand” and “shots” aren’t parallel to each other). Would it work better to say “sand-studded skin and twisted thighs” or something that puts both descriptions in the same category (ie anatomy) to achieve parallelism?
“If someone catches you reading it in the airport, it’s the kind of book” Technically, the kind of book is not conditional upon whether someone catches you at the airport, so this sentence is incorrectly ordered. This construction might make more sense: “It’s the kind of book whose cover you’d bend back if someone caught you reading it at the airport.”
“from two weeks ago” This phrase works better after “screenshot” since that is the noun it modifies. Otherwise, it sounds like Willow Williams was an extraordinaire from two weeks ago.
“laying” Unless she’s having sex in this picture, she’s “lying,” not “laying.” Lie means to recline, while lay means to place (or something else, in slang terms).
“next to her” This phrase works better after “daiquiri” since that is the noun it modifies. Otherwise, it sounds like the “blazing sun” is next to her.
“covering everything but her smoldering eyes” I can picture this Instagram post in my head, which is great.
“check myself” I’m not sure but I think this phrase means she wants to pull up the NYT website and see the proof herself. If so, it would read better as “check for myself” or “check the list myself.”
“it” This pronoun refers to either “I” or “Krystal,” neither of which can be referred to as “it.” Would it work better to say “right beside a big ol’ number one”?
“squeeze myself into a bottle of champagne and swim around a little” Love this image!
“larger 99%” Since we already know 99% is large, and we definitely know that 99% is larger than a small part of her, we don’t need the word “larger” here.